Did the House bluff moderate Senate Republicans?

Republicans who don't want to see Medicaid expand came into the day as the obvious winners. Then they doubled down, forcing an amendment meant to make expansion even more difficult to pass than it already was.

But why didn't the three Republican senators who have been pushing MarketPlace Virginia for months push back Thursday night?

All three said they saw little choice Thursday but to swallow that effort for now. Going past July 1 without a budget wasn't an option because it would have hurt the state's bond rating and forced deeper cuts in an already austere budget, they said.

Sticking with Democrats to pass a budget without Medicaid expansion, but also without the GOP amendments to further block it, wasn't much of an option either, Hanger and Watkins said.

"We had been provided a pretty good assurance that then the budget wouldn't pass the House," said (state Sen. John) Watkins, R-Midlothian.

"The House was prepared to shaft the bill," (state Sen. Emmett) Hanger said. "We could have called their bluff. I guess we'll be second guessing that for a while."

What do you think? Would House Republicans, who have been bashing Senate Democrats for months for not moving a "clean" budget without Medicaid expansion, really have held that line?

Might it have opened them up to criticism if, after getting everything they said they wanted in this budget fight, they blocked passage anyway, insisting on more?

Or does any of that really matter right now, in the immediate political climate left by this week's upheavals?

UPDATE: Speaker of the House William Howell's spokesman, Matt Moran, called in this morning with the statement below. The thrust of it is included in the main article linked above, but I'll add it here:

"The Speaker has never thought there was language in the budget that gave the Governor the authority to expand Medicaid unilaterally. But, based on reports that he may try to do so, a lot of members were rightly concerned about the language. House leadership expressed to the Senate in the strongest possible terms that it would be very difficult to secure passage in the House without an amendment. I wouldn't characterize it as a threat, rather just a statement of where we were last night. If the bill passed the Senate without the amendment and with very few Republican votes, of course it would have been problematic in the House."